1. Before Written History
Ancient North America
Before Written History

3. Pangaea
A theory that all the earth’s continents formed one enormous land mass
Before human evolution

4. Continental Drift
About 240 million years ago, continental drift pushed the landmass apart, allowing oceans to surround land much like our current geography.
Land of the Western Hemisphere was isolated by continental drift

5. Beringia
Changes in the earth’s climate that led to the reconnection of North America to Asia
The sea level dropped so that people could cross the land bridge of Beringia between Siberia and Alaska.

7. Paleo-Indian Hunters
By about 25,000 BP, humans had spread from Africa throughout Europe and Asia;
sometime after 15,000 BP, humans traveled the Beringia, the land bridge that connected Siberia to Alaska
Archaeologists refer to these first migrants and their descendants, who originated in Asia, as Paleo-Indians.
They traveled to North America is small bands to hunt, arriving sometime after 15,000 BP
Within 1,000 years, they arrived at the tip of South America

9. Clovis Points, evidence of a common culture

10. Mammoth Extinction
After the extinction of mammoths, Archaic Indians hunted bison and smaller game with Folsom Points
Like their ancestors, the Paleo-Indians, the Archaic Indians hunted with spears
But they also used nets, hooks, and set traps

11. Folsom Points

12. Artifact of Archaic Indians

13. Anasazi Culture
Began to flourish around AD 100 to the north in southern Utah and Colorado and northern Arizona and New Mexico. Beginning around AD 1000, some began to move to large, multi-story cliff dwellings; others built huge, stone-walled pueblos; a drought that began in AD 1130 caused the disappearance of the Anasazi culture.

20. Algonquian
Tribes occupying the Atlantic seaboard, the Great Lakes region, and much of the upper Midwest.

21. Iroquoian
Tribes occupying Pennsylvania and Upstate New York; some in the Carolinas and Georgia
Iroquois society observed matrilineal rules of descent, and property ownership by women

22. League of Five Nations A Confederation of Iroquoian Seneca Onondaga
Mohawk
Oneida
Cayuga